Ricciardo: Make cars slower to boost overtaking

Daniel Ricciardo says Formula 1 should prioritise racing over the outright pace of cars in order to boost overtaking. The Red Bull man was one of many drivers to spend frustrating amounts of time at the Australian Grand Prix stuck behind a rival, despite possessing greater pace.

Ricciardo moved through the field from eighth on the grid to fourth, but the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen proved too much to pass, despite the Australian setting the fastest lap of the race.

His Red Bull team-mate had similar frustrations while chasing down the McLaren of Fernando Alonso.

There were only five on-track overtakes at Albert Park - a tighter and twisting street circuit - and F1 are already looking at improving overtaking, but Ross Brawn says his project is unlikely to bear fruit until 2021.

A new set of aerodynamic regulations introduced in 2017 were built with the plan to make cars "five seconds per lap" faster, but Ricciardo believes it has come at the cost of exciting racing.

"I feel now with the wide tyres and wide cars, they already take up a lot of space on the track," he told Autosport.

"It's hard to find clean air. It's getting to a point where I think some racetracks are going to be hurt by the racing. There's not going to be much.

"I think narrower cars were great. It's like motorbikes, because they're so narrow there's always room to get past. And they lap 30 seconds slower than us.

"I think it proves it's not necessarily about the lap time. We do need the race-ability, because that's the spectacle."

Ricciardo pinpointed the 2014 cars as best for overtaking. That year saw 828 overtaking manoeuvres made. The number dropped from 866 in 2016 to 435 last year, by some way the lowest total since DRS was introduced.

"They were slow for our standards, but for a spectator they don't know necessarily that much different," Ricciardo added of the 2014-generation cars.

"But the racing... you could follow, you could pass. As far as overtakes went, I thought 2014 was good.

"Aerodynamically, they're very strong now. You see the sidepods of the car, there's so many bits. It looks sick, but all it means is the car behind is going to get pretty messed up.

"It's at a point now where at Barcelona, we were going fast. Turn two, three, was full [throttle], turn nine was full.

"It's impressive, but the faster we go, the harder it's going to be to overtake and the harder it's going to be to follow close.

"So do we want to see cars doing one minute 22 seconds as opposed to one minute 25, but not being able to race on Sunday? Or do you want to see slower cars but they can race?

"They still need to be fast but there's a balance."